Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Costs hold steady on Arkansas's Obamacare expansion

Here's the monthly recap on spending in Arkansas on the private option Medicaid expansion costs provided under Obamacare.

As David Ramsey has explained every month since last year, the news is good. The total cost of the private option and those "wraparound" additional costs for certain services continue to fall more than $13 per month per person under the $500.08 monthly cap. The savings are proceeding — particularly since enrollees are up — at a pace that should easily recover the small, in percentage terms, overspending in 2014.

One of Gov. Asa Hutchinson's many task forces is hard at work on what to do when he ends this efficiently operating program for 205,000 people in 2017.

More by Max Brantley

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge went to court late yesterday to get the state Supreme Court to halt mediation ordered by Circuit Judge Tim Fox in the case over issuing birth certificates to same-sex parents.

The latest effort to undo Obamacare, the Graham-Cassidy legislation, would shift federal support for health coverage to a block grant system to the states. Bad news for Arkansas.

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